After Setbacks, Evelyn Stevens Looks Ready for Best Season Yet

How the U.S. national time-trial champion worked on her weaknesses in the off-season, improved her skills, and learned to chill out.jen seeJanuary 1, 2012

Photo by One of the most talented female cyclists racing today, Evleyn Stevens has a big engine but has had to work hard to improve her bike-handling skills. She hopes to compete in the 2012 Olympic Games. (Robertson/Velodramatic)

Go back to 2008. Stevens was watching the Beijing Olympic Games from her couch. She pedaled laps in New York City’s Central Park whenever she could steal away from her job down on Wall Street. Then came 2009. Stevens rode more seriously but still didn't have a team and competed with a composite squad.

Then 2011: She raced on the world’s top-ranked women’s team—now defunct HTC-Highroad—and won the U.S. national time-trial championship. Now it’s the start of 2012 and she’s about to begin racing with the newly formed Specialized-lululemon team. And she’s got her sights set on the Olympics Games in London.

Through the rush of all this success, Stevens has kept her sense of humor intact.

“And my helmet’s still usually like that, but at least it’s a nice helmet.”

Yes, Stevens today has a nice helmet and a nice jersey, and both fit her fine. And Ina Teutenberg, one of the top female cyclists in the world, is now a teammate.
A body for cycling but a need for skills

By now Stevens' unique story is well known. She was working on Wall Street and got into racing by chance. Once she started racing she earned stellar results competing against the top riders in the United States.

Specialized-lululemon team owner and manager Kristy Scrymgeour has described Stevens as having the “perfect physiology” for cycling. Matthew Koschara, Stevens’ former coach, told the Wall Street Journal that she was the most complete rider he’d ever met and was impressed with her “tremendous engine.”

Stevens puts it like this: “Growing up I was like, Why are my legs so big and my upper body so skinny? Now, finally, I figured out why. I was meant to be a cyclist.”

But her one-in-a-million physical talent for pedaling bikes didn’t match her bike-handling skills, which she’s first to admit have been a real challenge. Lacking the years of experience of her peers, Stevens describes the peloton as a “wall” that she has to ride up against.

At the 2011 Giro Donne—the women’s Tour of Italy—Stevens found herself fighting against her bike on terrain that should have favored her. One of the stages included the 6,000-foot-high Passo di Mortirolo, and Stevens went to the race excited to take on the famous if fearsome climb. But when the field reached the summit of the Mortirolo, the talented climber wasn’t anywhere near the front.

“It was probably the lowest point in my cycling career,” she told Bicycling.

“I crashed like every five minutes—I ate it," she said. "The timing of my crashes was never good. I kept racing but it was almost more frustrating. I don’t know what it was. Something was off.”

A new approach

To continue improving as a cyclist, and to sharpen her bike-handling skills, Stevens moved to Boulder, Colorado, to train this off-season. There Stevens has found a new mentor in 1984 Olympic gold medalist Connie Carpenter, and she credits Carpenter with helping her to meet more people in the cycling community and to navigate the myriad details that could help her earn an Olympic medal. As a result, Stevens said she’s paying more attention to her body, nutrition, and the “little details because it’s that one or two percent that’s going to make a difference.”